Tag Archives: james

“James – Journey of Existence” Demo Exclusive to Kickstarter Backers

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My Kickstarter for hand-drawn 3D adventure indie game “James – Journey of Existence” (http://kck.st/19wTNSh) got a couple pledges this week, one of which nearly doubled the pledge count (not difficult, given how low it was a few days ago). Promising.

From the beginning of this Kickstarter, I promised that backers would receive an exclusive demo before the end of the Kickstarter campaign. There were a few reasons behind this: it was a very nice incentive for the $1 tier, and it was like a last-minute demo that might convince backers to increase their pledges a bit (or remove their pledges completely, if they so felt that way). And in the likelihood that the Kickstarter campaign fails, backers would still get something as a sign of thanks for their early support.

After a couple stressful weeks actually making the extra content for the demo, I can say it is completed, and the demo will be made available today to Kickstarter backers.

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Kickstarter Rewards Updated (or Removed)

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The Kickstarter for “James – Journey of Existence” is picking up a couple backers, which is reassuring given that it isn’t even on the “Ending Soon” projects page yet for Video Games. Anyhow, some backers might notice that the description for the project was shortened a little, and more importantly, the rewards were updated. Or rather, some of the rewards were removed completely.

A lesson I learned from this campaign: when putting a new game on Kickstarter, people probably don’t care about your game yet. So when you offer physical rewards such as documentaries, art books, or soundtracks, very few people would actually be interested. It can even hurt the campaign, as you appear vain to be willing to spend money on making such things before an audience ever suggests they want it. As much as I would love a plush toy of The Cat in “James – Journey of Existence,” I’m probably the only one who does.

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The Importance of Controversy…

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So, yeah. My Kickstarter page for “James – Journey of Existence” isn’t doing so well, despite the press I was able to snag for it. Unless it somehow gets a wave of backers in the last week, there isn’t much hope for it succeeding…

But I did get a lot of feedback, especially from sites like Reddit and Steam’s Greenlight Concept page, where gamers hang and aren’t afraid to downvote a post. Of the people who have seen the game, I’d estimate that roughly 91% don’t give a damn, 4% like the art style a lot, 3% hate the art style a lot, and 2% like the game’s concept but not the art in its current state. The interesting thing is, those last three groups are (almost) identical in size. Of course, that’s a huge estimate that could be way off, but that’s my interpretation based on comments.

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New “SD” Demo For “James – Journey of Existence”

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Have you tried the free demo yet of hand-drawn, hand-animated 3D adventure “James – Journey of Existence?” Were you able to run the game without it crashing?

As I’ve mentioned, the hardware requirements for having HD frames for animating the characters is demanding. A couple gamers have already complained that it would crash instantly. This is almost entirely due to the RAM, which requires almost 3.5 GB of FREE, UNUSED RAM: that means not in use by the operating system or other software. That comes out to requiring 5-6 GB of RAM on most standard computers. The processor, video card and hard drive requirements are manageable by comparison, but the game will crash if not enough RAM is available.

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“James – Journey of Existence” (Not) on Steam Greenlight!

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Ok, I want to put “James – Journey of Existence” on Steam’s Greenlight program, but it’s so early in development that I feel a little uncomfortable about that.

Instead, I noticed Steam has another option, to upload “Concepts,” which is similar to uploading a project to Greenlight, except that it doesn’t at all effect the game’s chances to getting published on Steam regardless of popularity. It’s a little unnecessary, but I figured the good gamers on Steam would be able to give an opinion.

You can find the game profile on Steam here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=214380982  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=214922280

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